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Well, you would have thought so from some of the nailbiting hall talk and email at work today concerning the announcement that the Obama administration will push for the cancellation of Constellation, replacing it with initiatives aimed at bringing the nascent commercial spaceflight industry into bloom. The doom and gloom around Orion was in (understandable) contrast to the delight (or simple satisfaction) seen around the space blogosphere.

I think Michael Mealing comes closest to my own attitude towards this development:

President Obama’s new policy for NASA is the most fiscally conservative and downright capitalist policy to come along since the agency was founded. 

And yes, it really boggles my mind that that should be the case. Obama? Capitalist? Who’da thunk? As one co-worker quipped today, Obama seems confused: he wants to nationalize a private industry in healthcare, but privatize the national program in manned space. One thing that has really surprised me today is how many of my friends have called or emailed me, expressing shock and disappointment that we are now “abandoning” space – unwittingly accepting the premise that a government program is our only possible means of getting people there. The perception that government is the sole entity capable of conducting manned spaceflight is so ingrained and unquestioned that it doesn’t seem to occur to even those who claim to be capitalists to question it.

But of course, I have to temper my surprise and excitement at this prospect, much as I did regarding the newfound enthusiasm for nuclear power Mr. Obama expressed in his SOTU last week. There’s going to be a lot of haggling to get the Congressional NASA caucus on board with this (although one Senator who could have been expected to be among the biggest roadblocks seems to be climbing on board – however reluctantly). It’s going to take some time, and who knows, just as ESAS made a dog’s breakfast of the VSE, so too could Congressional compromises and NASA resistance turn the promise of this new policy direction into yet another dead end.

Posted on February 1st, 2010 under Constellation, Economics, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Tags: altair, ares, cancellation, commercial space, Constellation, nasa, Orion. Comments: 3

It was an acronym frenzy  at Libery on the Rocks – DTC tonight. The PPC reportage was done by El Presidente, mostly via the People’s Press Twitter feed.

As with the big healthcare speech back in September (the occasion of the NPR incident), my commentary was delivered in the more transitory medium of live heckling of the teevee screen. This time around there wasn’t a neighboring table of kool-aid-guzzling Obama worshippers hissing and whining back at me, unfortunately, which took a bit of the fun out of it.

Apart from Fox’s amusing Drudge-like juxtapositions of lines from the speech with camera shots of topically-relevant politicians, there was only one thing that I liked about this SOTU: Mr. Obama’s promise to push for next-generation nuclear power in the U.S.. Of course, just like his promises to freeze (parts of) federal spending, expand government transparency, and usher in a new bipartisan civility, I realize that we are as likely to see any action on that promise as we are to see the National Mall host unicorn chariot races.

The rest of the speech was a nauseating stew of all-things-to-all-people statism and incongruous attempts to steal the fiscal responsibility and small government themes the Republicans are gearing up to campaign on in the fall, seasoned with the usual Democrat pathos and anger and garnished liberally with Mr. Obama’s trademark nose-high smugness. Noticeably absent yet again was any mention of NASA or space policy in general. “So what’s new?”, one might ask. Amid all the yammering about green energy trendy greenwashing scams and investment in taxpayer subsidization of (politcally sexy) science and technology, it’s still a little surprising that federal space policy didn’t merit a mention this time around, especially if the rumors are true that a change in that policy towards more climate monitoring (green!) and commercial services (jobs!) is imminent.

Posted on January 28th, 2010 under Constellation, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Tags: Constellation, LOTR, nasa, NPR, Obama, PPC, SOTU, state of the union, TOTUS. Comments: 1

Although Keith warns that the story is premature and may not be correct in its particulars, this Science Insider preview of the Obama administration’s revised space policy (particularly regarding Constellation) indicates that it might include some longed-for Christmas presents…including (and especially) the cancellation of Ares I.

I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the possibility of handing off Altair and the hypothetical lunar base to international partners, given the distortions that imposed on the ISS (e.g.: the higher-inclination orbit that allowed Soyuz to reach ISS from Kazakhstan). Nor am I especially enthusiastic about the possibility of accelerating the development of the unneeded Ares V, but I do recognize that it would be a political necessity to appease Sen. Shelby (R-Huntsville Makework Jobs) should Ares I actually get the long-overdue and well-deserved axe. Nor am I thrilled that NASA may be given $1-4B more, given the waste that has already plagued Constellation (Ares-1X, MLAS, and Ares I design mitigations, for example).

The potential stocking stuffers in this story, though, are the appearance that commercial cargo to ISS is finally being taken seriously as a part of NASA’s operations, and (personally, since I work on Orion) the possibility that Orion could switch to riding an EELV as it should have from the beginning. If true, the former will be a big boost to a true commercial space transportation industry, and the latter will make our design job on Orion a heck of a lot easier through more benign launch and abort environments and mass margins (not to mention the stack won’t look like a corndog any more — that’s just embarrassing).  While the rumored policy update does nothing to address what I consider to be the root problem — NASA shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place, but rather (if anything at all) encouraging through tech transfer and incentives the growth of robust private sector space industries — it would at least be a step towards a somewhat more sensible way of doing what the agency has been tasked with doing.

Posted on December 20th, 2009 under Constellation, European Space, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Commerce, Space Technology. Tags: altair, ares, atlas, Constellation, delta, eelv, Orion, Space Policy. Comments: 1

Reading the fisking of Griffin over at Vision Restoration (via Rand Simberg), this little tidbit caught my attention:

… If no USG option to deliver cargo and crew to LEO is to be developed following the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the U.S. risks the failure to sustain and utilize a unique facility with a sunk cost of $55 billion on the U.S. side, and nearly $20 billion of international partner investment in addition.Why is Dr. Griffin so concerned about the ISS when he got rid of most of the ISS science and non-assembly engineering?

Why is he so concerned about the ISS when his exploration plan requires the ISS to be abandoned in 2016? If the commercial COTS cargo services do not get built, Griffin’s plan already leaves us with no ability to get cargo and crew to the ISS until 2017-2019, after the ISS is abandoned! Even if the ISS is kept until 2020, and funding appears out of the blue to both support ISS and develop Ares I/Orion at a “brisk” pace, having Ares I/Orion in, say, 2018 does not make that much a difference. Plus, let’s be clear: keeping that schedule is highly unlikely given the funding needs of the ISS.

The notion of abandoning the ISS just five years after completing it has been getting a lot of attention lately, but I have to wonder, what does “abandon” really mean? If the international partners wanted to continue funding and servicing and using it for…umm…whatever ISS is actually used for beyond being a self-licking lollipop, would NASA permit it?

More interestingly, if NASA decides to terminate its own involvement with ISS, and a private company wants to make use of the station for space tourism or other commercial purposes, would NASA stand in the way? Or would it mulishly insist on deorbiting the station despite (or to spite) the offer of commercial utilization? After the fiasco with Mir, it’s a valid question.

Posted on September 13th, 2009 under Constellation, Economics, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Tags: almaz, bigelow, Constellation, COTS, deorbit, excalibur, international space station, ISS, mir, mircorp, nasa, space adventures, Space Commerce, spacex. Comments: 1

Yes, that’s all I have to say about Mr. X’s post on the future of Orion. Interesting.

Posted on September 4th, 2009 under Constellation, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Commerce, Space Technology. Tags: ares, commercial, dragon, lockheed martin, Orion, spacex. Comments Off

Sweet. 

The Wired article this comes from also contains more information about Scaled Composites’ recent test-flight teething pains with White Knight 2.  Sounds like the test problems were routine.

Posted on May 3rd, 2009 under Space Commerce, Space Technology. Tags: commercial space, private space, richard branson, scaled composites, space tourism, virgin galactic, white knight. Comments Off

Rand links to this interesting post at Cato Unbound on colonizing space and the “future of freedom”:

The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom…

(2) Outer space. Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket technologies have seen only modest advances since the 1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space, but we also must be realistic about the time horizons involved. The libertarian future of classic science fiction, a la Heinlein, will not happen before the second half of the 21st century…

The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world.

A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse, but the question of the future remains very open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. 

But then there’s this downer on one of the companies that might eventually get us past the “rocket problem”:

Due for lift-off on April 21, Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry secretary-general Datuk Abdul Hanan Alang Endut said the delay was because of problems with the launching vehicle.

The vehicle, Falcon 1, belonging to a company Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX), is to lift off the satellite from the launching pad at Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Island.

Abdul Hanan said SpaceX will be doing the repairs which will take at least six weeks.

Yes, these things take time to perfect - and in this case, a lot more time than those involved expected.  The problem is, as the Thiel article suggests, we don’t have a whole lot of time to waste.

Posted on April 17th, 2009 under Economics, Settlement, Space Commerce, Space Technology. Tags: capitalism, liberty, space settlement. Comments Off

Looks like CU Boulder isn’t so kooky after all (well, okay it is, but it’s at least doing something of potential benefit to commercial space):

Aerospace company SpaceDev and the University of Colorado at Boulder have teamed to form the Center for Space Entrepreneurship, or eSpace, an incubator focused on fostering space startup companies and commercializing technologies with space applications.

The not-for-profit will be located at the Louisville offices of SpaceDev, a Sierra Nevada Corp. subsidiary.

A $1 million grant from the Metro Denver Wired initiative helped fund the creation of the incubator. Other funding came from the Colorado Office of Economic Development, CU, SpaceDev and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

The eSpace center will offer five $20,000 grants to entrepreneurs in its first year. It’s also launching design competition in CU’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, funding three hands-on, student projects with a $90,000 grant.

Combining CU’s academic research resources with the manufacturing infrastructure at SpaceDev should create a fertile environment for space-oriented startup companies, said Scott Tibbitts, executive director of eSpace.

Tibbitts is the founder of StarSys Research, a company that SpaceDev bought in 2005. He will make eSpace his full-time focus.

Posted on January 27th, 2009 under Space Commerce. Tags: enterpreneurs, Space Commerce, SpaceDev, StarSys, startups, UC Boulder. Comments Off

Depending on your perspective, this move might be seen as an admirable example of not resting on your laurels, or a demonstration of epic cockiness:

Space Exploration Technologies has proposed to NASA a robotic cargo lunar lander service that would be priced at $80 million per mission.

SpaceX proposed the lander at a meeting with the US space agency because it is a member of Odyssey Space Research’s team for NASA’s Altair project office lander evaluation study that began in March. The SpaceX lander would deliver 1,000kg (2,200lb) to the Moon’s surface in support of NASA’s Altair missions. The unmanned Altair cargo version could deliver 14,000kg to the Moon.

The SpaceX lander is [sic] launched by the company’s heavy version of its Falcon 9 rocket. The standard version will make its maiden flight in 2009 with a first stage powered by nine Merlin 1C engines. The heavy version would use 27 engines with two Falcon 9 first stages as strap-on boosters.

Grooming contrived business opportunities for itself, SpaceX also proposed that NASA sponsor a $500M lunar lander competition.

Posted on October 3rd, 2008 under Space Commerce. Comments Off